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# Weekend Words: Honesty
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/weekend-words-honesty/
- Published: 2013-02-03T15:15:00.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:35:46.000Z
- Description: With fine art auctioneers taking bids from the chandeliers hanging overhead, Weekend Words holds aloft a lamp in search of honesty.
- Author: Weekend Editors
- Tags: Opinion, Weekend, Weekend Words, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 06:51 (2012, 2013, part 1)

![Cornelis Ketel, "The Mirror of Virtue" (c.1595). Black chalk, pen in brown, brush in grey, on blue paper. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. (Image via Web Gallery of Art) ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/02/2113-copy-2.jpg)

Cornelis Ketel, “The Mirror of Virtue” (c.1595). Black chalk, pen in brown, brush in grey, on blue paper. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. (click to enlarge) (image via Web Gallery of Art)

With fine art auctioneers taking bids from the [chandeliers](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/arts/design/as-art-market-rise-so-do-questions-of-oversight.html?pagewanted=all&ref=hyperallergic.com) hanging overhead, Weekend Words holds aloft a lamp in search of honesty:

> “For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.”  
>  
> **—Charles Baudelaire**  
>  
> “Honesty is praised and left to shiver”  
>  
> **—Juvenal**  
>  
> “We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.”  
>  
> **—Pablo Picasso**  
>  
> “It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.”  
>  
> **—Noel Coward**